In April 2019, Alexandra "Alex" Chen leaves a foster care group home after eight years to reunite with her brother Gabriel "Gabe" in Haven Springs, Colorado. Gabe shows Alex around Haven, with the townspeople primarily employed by a mining company, Typhon.While Gabe shows Alex his apartment and offers it as a gift to her, they get interrupted by Mac, who wrongfully believes Gabe is having an affair with his girlfriend Riley and attacks him. The altercation causes Alex's "emotions" to snap, resulting in her beating up Mac to defend Gabe. Later, Ryan informs them that Ethan has gone missing.
The player controls the protagonist, Alex Chen, to explore various locations in the fictional setting of Haven Springs and communicate with non-playable characters through the conversation system based on dialogue trees. Alex has psychic empathy powers that allow her to read and manipulate emotions, which she perceives as colorful auras, to physically see how others feel around her at the cost of being "infected" by their emotions. Some of the non-player characters will have more intense auras indicating trauma or hardship they may be going through. When Alex interacts with them, this creates a "nova" that appears to transform the world around Alex and the character to reflect elements of this trauma, giving the opportunity for the player to figure out what caused their emotions and to opt to guide Alex in helping to comfort the character.